‘But I need help with the fight. I need help bad.’
‘I don’t know …’
‘Please,’ said Horace. ‘This is the biggest fight I’ve ever been in. It’s eight rounds.’
‘And who are you fighting?’
‘His name is Vicente Salido. He’s fourteen and two, but I guess the record doesn’t tell the truth. The first loss was a split decision. Diego was there and said he was robbed. The second was his last fight. It was in Las Vegas. He won but was disqualified for using cocaine. So really he’s sixteen and O. Diego says people think he could be a champion, but he drinks and does coke and gets into fights at clubs. Plus, he’s already broken his hand three times. Diego said fans like him ’cause he once fought with a broken jaw and a busted hand and still won.’
‘When is it again?’
‘Seven days.’
‘Seven days?’ Ruiz shook his head.
‘Diego said he could give us a ride there ’cause he has a fighter in a four-round opener.’
‘Diego this and Diego that,’ Ruiz barked. He put a piece of Nicorette gum in his mouth and let out a long sigh. ‘I’ll help you, Hector, but I’ll help you as your official manager or not at all. What’s the fee Diego told you?’
‘Two thousand.’
‘Then thirty per cent of that.’
‘So that would be …’ Horace said and closed his eyes. ‘Six hundred dollars?’
Ruiz nodded vaguely.
‘And you’ll go with me to Tijuana and be in my corner?’
‘I’m not going to Tijuana. I hate it there. I’ve always hated it there. Anyway, my wife’s cousin is getting married next weekend. But I’ll train you.’
‘Diego said he’d charge two hundred to be in my corner. So thirty per cent of eighteen hundred is …’ Horace again closed his eyes and worked out the figures. ‘Five hundred and forty.’
‘I ain’t gonna nickel-and-dime with you,’ Ruiz said and his anger erupted. ‘This is what I’m talking about! This is what I mean when I think I should just hang it up. I don’t haggle and I won’t scavenge. Do you want my help or not?’
‘I do.’
‘Then it’s six hundred.’
Horace kicked at the concrete. ‘Alright,’ he said. ‘It’s a deal.’
*
They arrived at the Tijuana Marriott in Diego’s red car the morning of the fight. Diego and his boxer, Juan Pablo Martínez, checked into one room and Horace another. They ate in the hotel restaurant and then Horace went back to his room and lay in the biggest bed he had ever been in. He set the air conditioning to high and got under the clean sheets. The room smelled of flowers and fake ocean spray.
Diego knocked on his door at 4 p.m. and they took a cab to the Auditorio Municipal, a large white building with palm trees surrounding it. Horace and Juan Pablo were put in a small windowless dressing room, and Diego disappeared to find the promoter. Juan Pablo plugged in a boom box and listened to rap music while shadow-boxing in front of a full-length mirror. Horace sat watching him for a time and then walked the long corridor to the auditorium main floor. Tecate banners hung from all four sides of the red-and-white ring. Chairs sat twenty deep, and after them bleachers. He found a seat high in the rafters, watched the workers and waited.
*
When the fight finally came and his name was announced, Horace stepped toward the centre of the ring, in his red-and-gold trunks, to nothing but boos. Diego had told him it was to be expected. ‘They’re all stupid and drunk,’ he had said. ‘They don’t know anything about you – they just need to yell at something and they want the local guy to win. It’s that simple and they’re that dumb.’
Vicente Salido entered to unruly hometown applause. He nodded his head toward the people in their seats and waved his arms. He was tall and handsome and wore a rhinestone-encrusted green robe and turquoise trunks. The Auditorio Municipal was two-thirds full and a constant stream of people continued to come in and find their seats. There was one more preliminary bout after theirs, and then the main event. Horace watched the crowd around him in a near trance until Diego yelled at him. ‘It’s in here, Hector, in the ring.’
‘But there’s so many people,’ Horace said nervously. ‘He must be really good.’
‘He’s not that good,’ Diego said. ‘And he’s not the reason people are here. Remember, anybody can get beat – anyone. You’re just as tough as he is. And don’t worry about outside the ring. There’s nothing you can do about it. Anyway, forget it all ’cause, shit, man, it’s about time to start rocking.’ Horace looked at the referee, and finally, after waiting all day and worrying all week, the bell rang.
As Diego had said would happen, Salido hit Horace at will for the first three rounds. The shots didn’t hurt, but they began to add up. His ribs ached and his damaged eye began to swell. But what both he and Diego soon realized was that Salido didn’t like to get hit, and most of all he was distracted. His mind wasn’t on the fight.
‘You’ll have to take five to get one,’ Diego said excitedly after the third round. ‘But the one might be enough. He doesn’t look right. I can’t put my finger on it, but he doesn’t. You’ll have to pressure him and you’ll pay for it. But you have to go after him. You’ll have to cut the ring off and take the shots and get in, but if you can, you can beat him. He already looks like his best rounds are over. How do you feel?’
‘I’m not tired yet,’ Horace said, trying to breathe as deep as he could. His nose was dripping blood and his right eye was half swollen shut and his lips were cut. ‘He doesn’t hit as hard as I thought he would.’
In the fourth and fifth rounds, Horace took dozens of shots to the head, stomach, kidneys and ribs. Diego cringed throughout the two rounds and halfway into the fifth thought seriously of stopping the fight, but it was then that Horace connected three hard shots to Salido’s body and his opponent began to fall apart.
‘It’s time for you to take an even bigger chance,’ Diego cried after the fifth. ‘Keep your defence up but press harder and then harder after that.’
Horace’s right eye was now nearly shut and his lips were bleeding into his mouth. ‘I’m not scared of him,’ he said, trying to catch his breath. A small stream of blood leaked from his nose and covered his lips as he spoke. ‘I’m not scared of him at all.’
The sixth opened to Salido connecting with three combinations to Horace’s face. Horace countered with a left hook to Salido’s kidneys that dropped him. Salido got up but there was nothing left in him, and the only way he made it through the round was clinching and backing up. In the seventh, Salido came out sluggish and Horace went after him. He took a series of hard shots to the ribs and face, but finally found an opening and hit Salido with two more kidney shots, and Salido went down and he didn’t get up for nearly three minutes.
*
In the small empty dressing room, Horace sat alone, exhausted and hurt. Juan Pablo had already left the building. He had been knocked out in the second round and had taken a cab back to the hotel. Horace couldn’t get his eyes to focus. His vision was all blurs and streaks and his right eye was swollen shut. He showered and dressed but when it came time to put on his shoes, he couldn’t. Like after the fight in Monterrey it hurt to breathe, it hurt to button his shirt, it hurt to move at all.
Diego came into the room full of excitement. He gave Horace two codeine pills, helped him finish dressing, and they went into the now sold-out arena. People everywhere cheered and yelled in Spanish for the boxers in the ring. Horace ate two hot dogs and drank two Cokes, and stood in the back and watched Iván Morales fight a boxer from Argentina. The place erupted with every Morales punch.
But as the fight continued, the pain in Horace’s ribs grew worse, and in the seventh round he went back to the dressing room to find the door locked. He hobbled farther down the long corridor to another dressing room that was open. He lay on his back on a bench seat and closed his eyes.
When he woke, he could no longer hear the sound of the crowd. He
had to roll himself off the bench to stand. It was hard to walk. The auditorium was now quiet and most of the people were gone. He found Diego near the entrance talking to three old men.
‘Where have you been?’ Diego said. ‘You missed Érik Morales.’
‘Érik Morales was here!’
‘He saw your fight.’
‘He saw me fight? He really did?’
‘He said Vicente Salido had never been hit so hard.’
‘Really?’ Horace’s beat-up face broke into a smile and the pain in his ribs eased.
‘He also said Salido was seen getting drunk two nights ago and has been mixing heroin and cocaine lately. So don’t get too big of a head yet.’ Diego laughed and then handed Horace a manila envelope. ‘I found this at a souvenir booth. It’s an eight-by-ten promo picture of Morales when he was young. He even signed it for you. “For Hector, who punches as difficult as concrete. Buena suerta, Érik Morales.” I told him you didn’t know Spanish so he wrote it in English. I think he meant “who punches as hard as concrete”. But you get the idea. You feel good enough to get some food and celebrate?’
‘I think so,’ Horace said, still staring at the photo.
‘Are you sure?’
‘My ribs hurt pretty bad.’
‘They’ll hurt no matter what you do. Take two more codeine pills. Once we get them flowing in your system, you’ll feel better.’ Diego took them from a package in his coat pocket. Horace washed them down with a sip of Diego’s beer.
‘Your eye looks bad, but not any worse than it did the last time I saw you. At least he didn’t break your nose. Also there’s this.’ Diego handed Horace another envelope.
Inside were eighteen $100 bills.
‘I already took my two hundred out.’
Horace took another hundred from the envelope and handed it to Diego. ‘Here’s for gas and for tonight.’
‘Tonight?’
‘If you wouldn’t mind ordering for me and paying for it. I can’t understand anything anybody says here.’
Diego laughed and put the money in his wallet.
‘Is Juan Pablo coming with us?’
Diego shook his head. ‘He’s in the hotel, sulking. He should have had a few local fights before trying anything real. But he wouldn’t listen. He thinks he’s a lot tougher than he is, and he does the worst thing a boxer can do: he quits. He gave up at the end of the first round when he got hit with an uppercut that rattled him. If he had any guts at all, he lost them when he took that shot. He should have at least stayed and watched the fights and learned something, but he’s not that sorta kid. Anyway, let’s go have some fun. You earned it.’
*
Outside they met a middle-aged man with a boxer’s face, dressed in black jeans and a black dress shirt. He was smoking a cigarette and Diego introduced him as Javier Hernández. He spoke broken English. Diego waved for a cab and the three were driven to the red-light district of Tijuana and dropped off in front of a restaurant called Kentucky Fried Buches. Its sign was white with red letters, and below it read ‘Desde 1963’. Around them music blasted out of buildings and apartments, cars honked and drunk people walked in the middle of the road. It smelled of broken sewer lines, grilled meat, exhaust and urine.
‘You said you like Southern cooking, right, Hector?’
Horace nodded.
‘This place has nothing but fried chicken necks.’
‘Fried chicken necks?’
‘Don’t look so scared,’ Diego laughed and put his hand on Horace’s shoulder. ‘You’ll like them. Everybody likes them. We’ll just get a few as appetizers.’
Inside was a small room and they ordered at a white-and-red-tiled counter. The necks were served with tortillas and salsa and the three of them stood at a chest-high table and ate. Afterward they walked down the bustling street to a restaurant called Birriería Guadalajara.
‘This place has the best goat stew you’ll ever have in your life,’ Diego said and they sat at a corner table in the crowded restaurant. Diego looked at Horace and laughed. ‘Don’t look so worried all the time, Hector. You’re Mexican and you’re in Mexico. You should feel relieved, not worried. Everyone around here is like you. Finally you don’t have to be around white people all the time. So lighten up.’
A waitress came and Diego ordered beers and bowls of birria and began talking in Spanish with Javier. When the food came, Horace ate as much as he felt he had to so that Diego wouldn’t make fun of him. But he didn’t like the taste or how spicy it was. He drank a beer and then Javier ordered shots of tequila and he had one. Afterward Diego took them to a pharmacy and got Horace his own packet of codeine pills. They kept walking. They passed Americans in sailor uniforms, white college kids, street bands playing Tejano and rock music, an old woman sitting on a milk crate making tacos on a Coleman stove, street dogs, and prostitutes of all ages.
They passed a line of low-rider cars. As Horace stared at them, he felt a growing dread. He didn’t even like Mexican cars. The more tires he changed, the more he wished that all cars and trucks stayed stock. Like Mr Reese always said, why put so much money into things that don’t matter? Big rims and skinny tires and hydraulics didn’t even make sense.
Javier took them to a burgundy-coloured building where a neon sign Horace couldn’t understand hung above the door. Inside, a bouncer in a black suit stood behind a counter. Diego gave him money and they were taken past the main room, with its three stages and three naked women dancing, to a second room, where there were fewer people and only a single girl danced on the stage. There were four more girls standing near a small bar that was backlit in red neon light. The bartender wore a tuxedo.
‘Here are the youngest and best-looking girls in TJ,’ Diego said to Horace. A cocktail waitress in a red dress came and Diego ordered tequila and beer for the three of them. ‘These girls aren’t used up. It costs more, but everything good costs more. I’ll need extra money if you want me to set you up with one. And remember to use a condom. These girls are young but you still have to be safe.’
The waitress brought the beer and tequila. They toasted to Horace and he forced himself to drink the shot. He began to feel drunk and the pain in his ribs lessened. Diego and Javier again spoke in Spanish. Horace watched the girl dancing for two songs and then tapped Diego on the arm. ‘Do you think I have what it takes to become a championship boxer?’ His face was still swollen and his bad eye was still nearly shut.
‘You’re pretty good,’ Diego said and then turned in his chair and faced Horace. ‘But you have a lot of work to do. First, you should get away from Ruiz. He’s not a good trainer and he’s not a good person. You won’t go anywhere with him. I have to say, I was surprised at how tough you were tonight. I underestimated you. You can take a lot of punishment. But, you know, I haven’t seen a guy get hit that much in a long time. And I see fights every week. You get hit way too much – way too much. But on the flipside, I can’t believe how hard you hit. That’s something in your favour, and that’s something real.’ He stopped and took a long drink of beer and looked briefly at the girl dancing. ‘But you have to remember, you caught Vicente Salido on a bad night. That’s a fact. He has the natural gifts but he doesn’t take his craft seriously, and tonight it caught him. He thought he was better than he was, and that did him in as much as what you did. The reality is you have some serious faults, and, like I said the last time I saw you, when they get film on you it’s going to get seriously bad. Already you seem to run into punches and it’ll get a lot worse when they know your style. I guess I just don’t know how far you could go. I know it’ll hurt to find out. But you hit “as difficult as concrete”.’ Diego laughed and finished his beer. He patted Horace on the shoulder. ‘But let’s not talk about boxing. Let’s just have fun and celebrate your success, okay? You were a true warrior in the ring tonight.’ He went back to talking with Javier and ordered them more beer and tequila. All the while a girl, who looked fifteen, danced on the stage.
Horace drank the
next shot and beer that was set in front of him and by then he was drunk and he forgot about his swollen eye and face, his cut lips and hurt ribs. Diego asked him for another $100 and Horace gave it to him without question. Diego got up from his seat and began talking with the bartender. He came back with three more beers and three tequilas. They drank the tequila together and Diego put a beer in Horace’s hand and led him to the edge of the room, where two young girls stood in school uniforms. Diego took one by the hand and said to Horace, ‘I’ve already paid for you. All you have to do is follow her to the room.’
Diego walked up the flight of stairs and disappeared. Horace looked at the girl standing next to him. She was just over five feet tall, skinny, and very young and beautiful. She wore shiny black shoes with white stockings and a plaid skirt. Her bare stomach showed and she wore a thin white half-shirt and a black sweater over it. She took his hand and walked him up the same flight of stairs.
The room was small, with a TV in the corner. There were snapshot photos on the far wall near a desk, but he couldn’t make out what they were of.
‘Habla inglés?’ he asked.
The girl looked at him shyly and shook her head. She was too young and he didn’t want to touch her. He wanted to leave but wasn’t sure he should, and then she stood in front of him and took off her clothes. She undid Horace’s pants, pushed them down to his feet and dropped to her knees. He didn’t want her to do it at first, but she put her mouth on him and before he knew it he had come.
The girl was unready and stood up, gagging. She walked quickly to a sink, spit it out, washed her hands and face and brushed her teeth. He couldn’t tell if she was upset or not. He stared at her: her small ass and thin legs, her little breasts. He watched her dress and put on her high-heeled shoes and stumble in them like a kid would.
‘Mi nombre es Horace,’ he said.
She nodded, smiled, and then took his hand and led him back down the stairs to where Javier sat with a beer and a shot of tequila. Diego came down a half-hour later and they ordered more drinks. When they left, the streets were even more crowded, drunken and wild. They walked for half a mile and stopped at a taco truck, where Diego ordered Horace three pastor tacos and a horchata.
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